Qualia Soup makes some of the best videos around. Loved this one, and it actually is relevant in light of a great blog I was just reading over at NESS in response to a Discovery Institute IDiot rambling on about consciousness being immaterial.
It was brilliant. Richard pointed out so many ways in which the gospel stories are implausible that I had never before considered. He certainly has a lot to teach us, even if he turns out to be wrong on Jesus mythicism.
Excellent video and timely, Over at QuIRP Dualism is one of Decembers Featured Presentations. There is about 20 posts over there in the form of Video, Science News research articles, and Essays that provides background information on the topics in the video.
I watched the video approximately 1.2 times and here are just a few observations.
He bases his idea that non-physical substance is contradictory on the idea that substance is physical. Well clearly in this context of contrasting substance with non-physical substance, it isn't and an insistance otherwise simply represents a failure to grasp the flexibility of language itself and is perahaps question begging.
Secondly along these lines he criticizes explanations of the non-physical with analogies that use physical entities and notes that they explain nothing. At first I thought maybe he like 95% of all people doesn't understand how analogies work, that all analogies entail dissimilarities by definition though analogies are criticized on the basis of those dissimilarities. Those criticisms are invalid unless the dissimilarities are essential to the explanation and in my experience, they aren't always. But in actuality, I just don't know that he's actually encountered a good ananlogy for non-physical entities. He didn't have much to say.
One could have suggested that we just don't have any good descriptions of non-physical substance like we do physical ones, and as a neophyte in the philosophy of mind, for all I know, this is correct. But this is actually not that big of a problem. Huge portions of our experience cannot be described in and of themselves after all. For example, try to define blue in and of itself without reference to any thing that is accidentally related to blue (including wavelengths of light which very well could be assigned different experiences of colors by different minds such as with different creatures or people with a sort of colorblindness) or without pointing to some blue object and saying "that's blue" so that if a man born from birth blind could recognize it. Common every day experiences are inneffable in and of themselves and we only speak of them by relating them (ex: the sky is blue; this shade of blue is darker than that shade)
So with the non-physical, we have experiences that we suspect cannot be fully handled by the limits we intuit (or in some cases explicitly perceive) of physicality.
Those of us who are Platonists know that the non-physical exists, and I know the author didn't want to get into those other sticky dualisms, but not having a thorough explanation of the non-physical cannot stop us from making the reasonable claim that mathematical entities exist since it seems irrational to speak of truth that doesn't relate to reality, and yet vast amounts of mathematics do not have any physical counterparts. The infinitely complex mandelbrot set fractal comes to mind.
I don't think souls are like mathematical entities, but the point is that we substance dualists are in good company in not being able to fully articulate the nature of the existence of something for which we cannot fully articulate. Many Platonists when asked about the existence of mathematical entities can't say any more than that they exist in the way that is appropriate for concepts to exist. But to deny this is truely odd when their discoveries can be reproduced exactly.
Back to the issue of analogies, I think Hasker's emergence dualism is a very good response to some of the issues raised here. Hasker suggests that the soul or non-physical mind (yes I will use them interchangeably... see above on the flexibility of language and their commonusages definitely reflect a degree of interchangeability) bear a similar relationship that we see between a magnet and a magnetic feild. The Magnet generate the field in virtue of the allignment of the atoms and yet causation can flow either way. You can move a magnet by affecting it's feild and you can affect the field by altering or moving the magnet. Likewise, the soul is generated by the body and is intimately related to it and is a very important part.
As for the rest, I have been writing a blog topic of my own and will post it which will take this video into account as well as a video response that was posted to it on youtube.
I don't think souls are like mathematical entities, but the point is that we substance dualists are in good company in not being able to fully articulate the nature of the existence of something for which we cannot fully articulate.
Ooh look at me spouting a priori truths! I think what I wrote is intelligible but this is one of those that I should've proof read. What I meant to say here is that we are good company with those who believe something exists even though they can't fully articulate the nature of that existence.
There is no god and I am happy. There is a god and I am happy. There is no god and I am happy. There is a god and I am happy. Who is right, and who is wrong. The one who is right is happy. The one who is not wrong is happy. The one who is not right but thinks he is right is happy. The one who is wrong is not happy. Am I wrong? I am wrong, and I am happy. Is happiness the goal? Perhaps not. Is truth the goal? Perhaps. Why is truth more valuable than happiness? What is truth in the face of death? What is death in the face of happiness?
7 comments:
Qualia Soup makes some of the best videos around. Loved this one, and it actually is relevant in light of a great blog I was just reading over at NESS in response to a Discovery Institute IDiot rambling on about consciousness being immaterial.
This is totally off-topic, but have you seen the video of Richard Carrier's Skepticon talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOGebAEOU2g&feature=player_embedded
It was brilliant. Richard pointed out so many ways in which the gospel stories are implausible that I had never before considered. He certainly has a lot to teach us, even if he turns out to be wrong on Jesus mythicism.
Brilliant video, saying many things I couldn't have said better myself. This material is sorely needed over on the FRDB forums.
Excellent video and timely,
Over at QuIRP Dualism is one of Decembers Featured Presentations. There is about 20 posts over there in the form of Video, Science News research articles, and Essays that provides background information on the topics in the video.
I watched the video approximately 1.2 times and here are just a few observations.
He bases his idea that non-physical substance is contradictory on the idea that substance is physical. Well clearly in this context of contrasting substance with non-physical substance, it isn't and an insistance otherwise simply represents a failure to grasp the flexibility of language itself and is perahaps question begging.
Secondly along these lines he criticizes explanations of the non-physical with analogies that use physical entities and notes that they explain nothing. At first I thought maybe he like 95% of all people doesn't understand how analogies work, that all analogies entail dissimilarities by definition though analogies are criticized on the basis of those dissimilarities. Those criticisms are invalid unless the dissimilarities are essential to the explanation and in my experience, they aren't always. But in actuality, I just don't know that he's actually encountered a good ananlogy for non-physical entities. He didn't have much to say.
One could have suggested that we just don't have any good descriptions of non-physical substance like we do physical ones, and as a neophyte in the philosophy of mind, for all I know, this is correct. But this is actually not that big of a problem. Huge portions of our experience cannot be described in and of themselves after all. For example, try to define blue in and of itself without reference to any thing that is accidentally related to blue (including wavelengths of light which very well could be assigned different experiences of colors by different minds such as with different creatures or people with a sort of colorblindness) or without pointing to some blue object and saying "that's blue" so that if a man born from birth blind could recognize it. Common every day experiences are inneffable in and of themselves and we only speak of them by relating them (ex: the sky is blue; this shade of blue is darker than that shade)
So with the non-physical, we have experiences that we suspect cannot be fully handled by the limits we intuit (or in some cases explicitly perceive) of physicality.
Those of us who are Platonists know that the non-physical exists, and I know the author didn't want to get into those other sticky dualisms, but not having a thorough explanation of the non-physical cannot stop us from making the reasonable claim that mathematical entities exist since it seems irrational to speak of truth that doesn't relate to reality, and yet vast amounts of mathematics do not have any physical counterparts. The infinitely complex mandelbrot set fractal comes to mind.
I don't think souls are like mathematical entities, but the point is that we substance dualists are in good company in not being able to fully articulate the nature of the existence of something for which we cannot fully articulate. Many Platonists when asked about the existence of mathematical entities can't say any more than that they exist in the way that is appropriate for concepts to exist. But to deny this is truely odd when their discoveries can be reproduced exactly.
Back to the issue of analogies, I think Hasker's emergence dualism is a very good response to some of the issues raised here. Hasker suggests that the soul or non-physical mind (yes I will use them interchangeably... see above on the flexibility of language and their commonusages definitely reflect a degree of interchangeability) bear a similar relationship that we see between a magnet and a magnetic feild. The Magnet generate the field in virtue of the allignment of the atoms and yet causation can flow either way. You can move a magnet by affecting it's feild and you can affect the field by altering or moving the magnet. Likewise, the soul is generated by the body and is intimately related to it and is a very important part.
As for the rest, I have been writing a blog topic of my own and will post it which will take this video into account as well as a video response that was posted to it on youtube.
I don't think souls are like mathematical entities, but the point is that we substance dualists are in good company in not being able to fully articulate the nature of the existence of something for which we cannot fully articulate.
Ooh look at me spouting a priori truths! I think what I wrote is intelligible but this is one of those that I should've proof read. What I meant to say here is that we are good company with those who believe something exists even though they can't fully articulate the nature of that existence.
There is no god and I am happy. There is a god and I am happy. There is no god and I am happy. There is a god and I am happy. Who is right, and who is wrong. The one who is right is happy. The one who is not wrong is happy. The one who is not right but thinks he is right is happy. The one who is wrong is not happy. Am I wrong? I am wrong, and I am happy. Is happiness the goal? Perhaps not. Is truth the goal? Perhaps. Why is truth more valuable than happiness? What is truth in the face of death? What is death in the face of happiness?
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